The A3000, also known as the Commodore Amiga 3000, was a much more serious proposition to build a professional multimedia computer than the previous A2000 effort. It was released in June 1990.

The Amiga 3000 came in a desktop box with a separate keyboard.

Technical Specifications

• a Motorola 68030 processor at either 16 MHz or 25 MHz (The 16 MHz models were discontinued soon after).
• 2MB of memory (configured as 1MB chip ram and 1MB 32bit Fast ram), expandable to a total of 18MB onboard.
• a 68881 or 68882 FPU coprocessor (The 16 MHz model shipped with a 68881, the 25 MHz model with a 68882)
• the ECS chipset.
• a SCSI interface and a Quantum LPS40S (40MB), LPS52S (50MB) or LPS105S (100MB) 3.5" Hard Drive.
• a built-in 'flicker fixer' which enabled the use of a VGA monitor.

One could increase the amount of Fast RAM by adding ZIP DRAM chips, these were notoriously difficult to fit - and were available in two varieties, Page Mode or Static Column.

Other models included the A3000UX bundled with UNIX System V Release 4, and the A3000T tower computer.

An enhanced version, the Amiga 3000+, with the AGA chipset and an AT&T DSP chip was produced to prototype stage but never launched, instead Commodore replaced the A3000 with the cost-reduced A4000. One compromise of the A4000 was the use of PC-compatible memory. This resulted in memory access approximately 50% slower (given identical clock rates) as compared to the A3000.

The A3000 designation was also used on an Acorn Archimedes model.

Commodore Amiga | Expandable PCs

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